


Dream Big

by whelvenwings



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Amnesia, Amnesiac Castiel (Supernatural), Angst with a Happy Ending, Canon-Typical Violence, Dean Dreams, Dean/Cas Reverse Bang, First Kiss, Fluff and Angst, M/M, Mild Hurt/Comfort, Miracles, Pining, Pining Dean Winchester
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-21
Updated: 2018-06-21
Packaged: 2019-05-26 12:30:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 14,037
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15000923
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/whelvenwings/pseuds/whelvenwings
Summary: The worst has happened. Castiel is lost, alone, on the run - with no memory of who he is.Dean and Sam are desperate, driving through the night to try to get to him before he hurts himself or someone else. But there's no sign of him - not until Dean starts having dreams, and around them strange things begin to happen. Things that give Dean hope. Hope that there's a chance that Castiel isn't completely gone - that maybe he could come back.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This fic was written as part of the 2018 Reverse Bang, in which I was lucky enough to be able to claim an amazing and beautiful artwork by [thefriendlypigeon](http://thefriendlypigeon.tumblr.com)!! Thank you so much for creating such a wonderful and inspiring piece!!
> 
> You can find the art masterpost [here](http://thefriendlypigeon.tumblr.com/post/175117029904/dream-big-dcrb-2018-art-masterpost-the-worst) on tumblr!!!

“Let’s just not talk about it.”

Sam raised his eyebrows in response, and said nothing.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Dean bit out.

“It means I’m not talking about it.”

Dean pressed down hard on the Impala’s accelerator, and she roared angrily up to fifty miles per hour. The road before them was empty at this hour, with the night creeping, cowardly, towards a murkily dismal dawn. There was a low fog hanging over the grass fields on either side, which were gradually giving way to woodland.

“If you had just -”

“Don’t do this, Dean.”

“I’m not doing anything. I’m just saying, if you’d just listened to me and picked up that damn thing before Cas could get his hands on it…” Dean drew in a sharp breath, and stopped abruptly. Saying Castiel’s name out loud made it worse.

“We didn’t know what it was, Dean,” Sam said, his voice pointed, each word enunciated clearly. “I couldn’t just go picking it up like it was a penny on the ground. And Cas should have known better than to -”

“Don’t you blame this all on him. OK? This is on all of us.” Dean stabbed at the brake with his foot as they turned a corner, and Sam grimaced as the car lurched.

“It doesn’t even matter who it’s on,” Sam said. “The important thing is that we get him back. Right?”

“You think you have to tell me that?”

“I don’t think anything.”

“Well that at least sounds pretty much about right,” Dean couldn’t stop himself from saying, his hands tight on the steering wheel. His heart was still pounding, his eyes aching, and he was absurdly aware of the emptiness of the back seat. Every glance in the rearview was another punch in the gut.

“Dean… come on.” Sam’s voice was tired.

“He’s supposed to be a goddamn angel,” Dean said furiously. “This shit isn’t supposed to affect him at all. Why the hell can’t he just…” He waved a hand off the steering wheel, angry fingers fluttering dismissively in the air. “Angel it away?”

“We knew it was powerful,” Sam said distantly. He was looking straight ahead, like he usually did when Dean was angry and he didn’t want to engage with it. “We knew that. Cas himself said that he’d never seen anything like it before.”

“But powerful enough to make Cas -” Dean couldn’t even get the words out. The sentence slammed to a stop. “The summoning didn’t work. Praying didn’t work.”

“Look, we've had sightings. The guy at the gas station back there said he saw someone matching Cas’ description not more than an hour ago. He hasn't gone far.”

“We have no idea where he's gone,” Dean shot back. “We've got no idea where he's headed. We could be driving in completely the wrong direction -"

“We'll stop at the next town and ask around.”

“Like that'll help.” Dean breathed out sharply. “He could be anywhere.”

“We’ll find him,” Sam said, and now he looked at Dean.

Dean willed his eyes to stay dry.

“Course we will,” he said gruffly. “That’s not even a question.”

They drove on in silence, nothing more to say. Dean tried not to look behind him, at the backseat. Tried not to think about what had happened earlier in the night, and what it might mean for the future. 

Tried not to think about where Cas might be now - alone, out here in the dark.

Of course, Dean thought, it had all been going too well. Everything had been too good. That was why this was happening - that was why everything was being taken away.

Like it always,  _ always _ was. The inevitable tide of fear and loss.

For a moment, though, Dean had believed things might be different. He let himself linger on a memory, a good one, one tinged with the warmth of impossible happiness. A motel room. His hand, unclenching. His breath, catching slightly as he stopped holding it. 

Castiel, standing close to him - watching him -

“Dean!”

Sam’s sudden warning jerked Dean out of his own head. With a widening of his eyes, he saw it - the way the road ahead of them cracked and broke like shattered glass, whole sections of concrete ripped up and pointing jaggedly skyward.

With a slam on the brakes, Dean brought the Impala screeching to a stop. He winced at the sound of her wailing at the friction on the road, and she only just managed to halt herself a few yards before the road split and fractured; like a living beast, she breathed out exhaust fumes into the night and looked out over the damage to the road ahead.

For a few stunned seconds, there was only the sound of the Impala ticking over, and Sam and Dean’s own breathing.

“What the hell,” Sam murmured.

Dean left the keys in the ignition, but threw open the door of the car and got out. One hand on the Impala’s roof for support, he tried to take in the scene ahead of them.

On either side of the road, trees crouched like a giant’s children peering down at their toys - toy road, toy car, two tiny toy men standing with their arms stiff and mouths open with shock. The trees were wildly overgrown, huge things dripping leaves like fat wet tears, far closer to the road than they should have been; their branches creaked a little in the low wind that was just starting to pick up. And all across the road, great whips of plant root had burst up out of the cement - ropes of them, some of them as thick as Dean’s arm, some far thicker. In the curling dawn fog, they looked like the silent, motionless, spilled-out web strands of a spider as tall as a house, but they were leafed over in places with little sprouts of new plants growing - they weren’t dead things, and somehow the hum of life and growth that ran through them just managed to take the edge of menace off them.

The scene was just shy of fearful. It walked the line between terrifying and magnificent; the forest had broken its bounds, and its strong-bough groans were deep and rumbling. Dean stood and stared at it, his breath swirling out into the cool, damp air.

He'd never seen anything like it.

“Is this him?” Sam said, staring out at the scene.

“It's him,” Dean said. He couldn't have explained how he knew.

“But why?”

Dean had no answer for that.

“Ah, Cas,” he said softly. The sound of the name was an ache. “Cas… what’ve you done?”


	2. Chapter 2

The motel that they checked into, when Sam finally convinced Dean that they weren’t going to find Castiel if he drove them off the road in a haze of tiredness, was even worse than their usual fare; the walls were stained, the single chair was broken, and the place reeked of old cigarette smoke. Dean dropped onto one of the beds, and springs groaned like irritable old men. One of them jabbed up into his spine.

“Two hours,” Dean said, snapping off the lamp and trying to settle comfortably in the semi-darkness. Light from outside was still filtering through the thin curtains, sickly and pale.

“Three,” Sam replied flatly, from the other bed.

“Sam, we’ll lose him. Forever. We don’t have time to sleep for that long when -”

“You saw the road out there,” Sam said. Dean heard him roll over to face the opposite wall. “If he’s pulling stunts like that then it’s not gonna be finding him that’s the problem. He’s not even moving fast. It’s gonna be getting him somewhere safe. Convincing him to come with us. We’ll need to be sharp, and that means getting some -”

“He’s out there right now.” 

There was a pause. Dean could feel his words crackling in the air, angry electricity.

“Dean -”

“He’s on his own. We’re the only ones trying to help him. If someone else puts him down before we can -”

“Dean, he’s an angel. He tore up a road. He’s got wings. He’s going to be okay.”

“If he hurts someone, though.” Dean swallowed. “He’ll never forgive himself.” The sentence was too raw, too true; spoken softly, somehow it showed off the depth of knowledge Dean had of Castiel in a stark light, and it was embarrassing. 

Dean cleared his throat. “Two hours,” he grunted.

This time, Sam didn’t complain.

***

Deep in dream, Dean found himself in a dark, dark room. One that he recognised.

The bookshelves along one side. The table in the centre. The single candle lit in the middle, the only source of light.

This was where it had happened.

“No,” Dean said, but no sound came out of his mouth. The walls of the room were shifting like sand in a high wind, rising and falling, and the whisper of the grains moving over and around each other started to pick up and crescendo. Dean looked to his left, and sure enough, there he was: Castiel, standing in his trench coat and his suit, with his hair a familiar shocked mess and that puzzled expression on his face - the one that made Dean’s chest catch, every time. 

He was dreamlike, loose around the edges, blurred. Dean ached.

“No,” he tried to say again, but the word was noiseless. Why wouldn’t his voice work? “Cas -”

“What is it?” said Sam’s voice from behind Dean - the tone of it deep and distorted.

Castiel, blurry and soft, was squinting at something sitting on a bookshelf, and reaching out his hand for it. Something round and shining, some kind of amulet. He moved impossibly slowly.

“No -” Dean said, but there was no sound, and his feet wouldn’t move and his hands couldn’t reach far enough to pull Castiel away. He looked untouchable, anyway, like smoke and sand cupped briefly into a shape Dean knew. 

Behind him, Dean knew Sam was standing and watching - but when Dean tried to turn, tried to tell his brother to help, he lost his balance and fell to his knees. From the floor, he saw Castiel’s hand nearing the amulet; the ground was quicksand when he tried to stand up.

“Don’t touch it!” he tried to shout. Pointless.

“I haven’t seen it before,” Castiel said. His voice was distant, surreal, a little echoing, the dream shaving off sharp details. “And it has a strange kind of energy. It’s as though it’s vibrating at multiple speeds at once. Some kind of play on dimensionality.”

“Cas,” Dean said, trapped as though in manacles, straining every muscle to no use. “Cas, listen to me, don’t touch it.”

Castiel, though, had his fingers just a fraction of an inch from the amulet.

“It’s almost angelic,” he said. “But -”

“No,” Dean moaned, as Castiel’s hand closed on the amulet and his voice dropped away.

Slowly - so slowly - Dean watched Castiel turn. He wanted to look away, didn’t want to have to see this again, and yet he couldn’t turn his back and couldn’t close his eyes. The dream held him, locked in place, eyes held wide. His heart was pounding in his chest.

Castiel’s expression was shifting, brow creasing, eyes filling with a sudden seizure of doubt.

There was a moment of absolute quiet, when all Dean could hear was the sound of his own breath being drawn into his lungs.

Castiel looked at Dean, and said,

“Dean?”

And he said it as though he wasn’t quite sure. As though - somehow - he was looking at Dean and not quite knowing it was Dean. Which was impossible.

“You know me,” Dean said in the dream, and the words were noiseless. Meaningless. 

He watched as the recognition in Castiel’s eyes guttered, flickered, faded - and died.

“Cas?” said Sam’s voice.

Castiel didn’t look at him. Didn’t respond to his own name. His gaze dropped from Dean’s face, sliding away. His expression was placid, glass-like, blank.

“Cas -” Dean said, and the single word sounded out this time. It sounded like a plea. “Cas - don’t -”

But with a beat of his wings, Castiel was gone.

Dean could feel wetness on his cheeks. He could hear the low sound of someone crying out, and it was waking him up. The dark room - the room in the old house they’d visited on their last case, the room where they’d lost Castiel - began to pale away. Dean surrendered to it easily, willing the horror to fade.

Yet on the point of waking, Dean felt a catch; and he turned back towards his dream, slipped back under for long enough to see blue eyes, wide and confused. There was a new figure in the dark room with the loose sand walls, a figure that was somehow sharper and more  _ outside  _ than the rest of the dream’s surroundings. The trench coat, the suit, the hair - they were defined, neatly coloured, a photograph sticky-taped to an impressionist painting.

“Cas?” Dean murmured, as consciousness called him away. The blue eyes blinked.

“Who are you?” Castiel said. Not angry, not scared - just confused. He didn’t know Dean.

Dean didn’t know how to begin to answer. He reached for words that wouldn’t come, explanations that were meaningless, until a wave of wakefulness washed him away from the room and away from Castiel.

When Dean woke up, he realised the person crying out had been him. 

He let his cheeks dry without touching them, refusing to acknowledge the wetness of them, and breathed quietly.

If he’d woken Sam, neither of them mentioned it an hour and a half later when they left the motel. For that, at least, Dean was grateful.


	3. Chapter 3

“We just need to figure out where he’s headed,” Dean said, for the fourth time, as they swung out of the motel parking lot and hit the road.

“I don’t think he’s headed anywhere, though,” Sam replied, with more patience than Dean could have mustered. “I think he’s moving aimlessly. He’s not himself.”

“He’s still  _ Cas. _ ”

“Is he?”

The question felt uncomfortable; Dean didn’t answer. The look he’d seen on Castiel’s face, right before he’d flown away from that dark room - it had been one of total blankness. There had been nothing of Castiel in it.

Whatever that - that thing, that amulet, was - it had wiped Castiel clean like a hard drive. That’s what it had looked like, at least.

“Could this be a possession?” Dean said, as Sam scrolled on his phone in the passenger seat. The road here was unshattered by forest, which made driving easier, but also deepened the pit of worry in Dean’s stomach. There was no way to know if they were even headed in the right direction.

“I don’t think so,” Sam said. “Right before he left, Cas said the - the amulet, whatever it was, it felt like it was moving in multiple dimensions. He said it was almost angelic. I think he’d have known if an actual angel had somehow been trapped in there, or something. I don’t even think that can be done.”

“This time yesterday I didn’t think that wiping an angel’s memory could be done,” Dean pointed out hollowly. “But that’s our only other explanation.”

Sam looked over at him, and there was a look on his face that made Dean waver; just a touch too much sympathy, and his wall of outward emotionlessness was shaken. He cleared his throat, and kept his eyes on the road.

“We’ll get him back,” Sam said, returning to his phone.

“Yeah.” Dean nodded, and swallowed hard. After a long pause, he added, “It’s just - it’s not fair. The timing of it -”

His voice cracked, and he stopped talking, hoping that Sam hadn’t noticed and thought he’d just come to the end of his sentence. Last night, while he’d dreamt, the tears had come easy; now, in the daytime, his sadness was dry and hot and splitting him in two like baked earth.

“The timing?” Sam repeated, questioning - but before Dean had to answer, Sam gave a little noise of surprise. He was still holding his phone in both hands, and Dean glanced over to see his eyes flying left to right over the screen.

“What?” he demanded. “What is it?”

“It’s good news,” Sam said. “I think.”

“Cas? Did he text you? Is he -?”

“No,” Sam said quickly. “No. But I think I know where he is.”

He turned his phone, a picture blown up large on the screen. Dean turned to look at it, slowing down just a touch on the road and trying not to veer to one side. His eyes widened as he took in the image.

“Holy crap,” he murmured.

“Two miles away,” Sam said. “Make a right.”

***

When they arrived at the park, Dean and Sam got out of the car slowly. It was a wide open, grassy space, and to the left there was a children’s play area with monkey bars and swings and a slide. The parking lot was encircled by a fence, and the two of them moved hesitantly towards the gate. Right before they entered, Sam met Dean’s eyes and raised one brow. His expression said, quite clearly,

_ Do we have to? _

And Dean’s tightening of his lips as he pulled open the gate said,

_ Yes. _

The article that Sam had found on his phone had prepared them both a little for the scene that they walked into, but not enough. Dean clenched his jaw to stop his mouth falling open as he walked the short distance across the grass towards the children’s play area. There were some people milling about, all looking around with the same expression on their faces - the one that Dean was fighting now, one of awe. Some were laughing disbelievingly, and there were photos being taken. Dean saw a news anchor and her camerawoman off to one side.

And everywhere - all around them, on the grass, on the monkey bars, on the swings and the slide and the jungle gym and the trees nearby, on the shoulders and hands of the people in the play area - there were butterflies.

Wingspans smaller than the length of a finger, still and docile and quiet, the butterflies rested on every surface. There was a little whispering sound that rustled through the park, as thousands of pairs of wings gently opened and closed. They were a bright, brilliant, beautiful blue.

Dean bent down and scooped one up in his hand.

He should have felt horrified by it, he knew. He’d never been big on bugs and creepy-crawlies, and just because butterflies had cute wings didn’t mean he could forget the antenna and weird legs happening in the middle - not normally. But this time… maybe it was the calmness of them all, the way that the one he was holding rested peacefully on his palm. Maybe it was the sheer wonder of the spectacle, a great swathe of blue that softly moved, that inspired too much wonder to leave any room for disgust or fear.

Maybe it was the colour of the little creatures. The blue of them put Dean in mind of things that were familiar in a way that made his chest hurt.

Whatever it was, the butterflies weren’t scary, or horrible. They were beautiful.

“They’re Karner Blues,” Sam said. Dean looked up at him, squinting against the sun.

“Huh?”

Sam seemed to remember that Dean was there, and looked down at him.

“Karner Blue butterflies,” he said. “They’re endangered. Hardly ever seen. This is - this is incredible.”

Dean gently tipped the butterfly in his hand back onto the grass, and stood up.

“It’s worrying that you know that,” he commented, eyes sweeping the scene, trying to figure out the best way to approach this. “OK, you go talk to the news anchor, see if she knows anything about when exactly this happened.”

“What are you gonna do?”

Dean nodded his head towards a gaggle of mothers standing to one side, arms folded, watching their children play with the butterflies and talking together. Sam’s eyes followed his nod, and then turned back to Dean with an exasperated look on his face.

“Dean,” he said. “Are you serious? Now is really not the time.”

It took Dean a moment to understand what he was talking about - and then it clicked, and he opened his mouth without knowing what to say. The sheer level of wrongness Sam had achieved was startling, but Dean was never good at denying things plausibly, whether they were true or not. He gave it his best shot.

“Hell no,” he said, with feeling. “Are you kidding? You think Cas is missing and we’ve got a field full of a zillion butterflies and I’m scoping for MILFs? Come on.”

“MILFs?” Sam shook his head, and began to head towards the news anchor, stepping carefully between the butterflies on the ground. “It’s worrying that you know that.”

He walked away, and Dean was left to stare after him. 

“Everyone knows about MILFs,” he said, and it came out vaguely petulant, like a small boy back-talking a parent. He frowned, and adjusted his coat, and headed towards the mothers. Some of them really were very pretty, Dean noticed now, but Sam had been way off the mark - there was no way he was looking at any of them with that in mind.

At some point, he’d probably have to explain to Sam why not. That was a problem for later, though. And it didn’t seem like a big one, somehow, with all of the butterflies carpeting every surface around him. Their calmness was as catching as a yawn, soft and good like a feather pillow.

“Hi,” Dean said when he reached the bench that the mothers had gathered around, reaching into his inside coat pocket and pulling out an ID. “I’m here to investigate this, uh, unusual event. Were any of you here when the butterflies arrived?”

“I think Karen was,” one of the mothers said, looking to her left and right for support. “She’s over there with her son.”

Dean followed her pointing finger to see a woman standing next to the slide; she was watching a boy who was sitting at the very top, his shoulders and hair thick with butterflies. Dean thanked the mothers politely, and headed for the pair over by the slide, keeping every step careful.

“Hi,” Dean said again, using the same tone of voice that he’d employed before - polite, yet authoritative. The mother’s eyes glanced across the ID and slid away, returning to his face. “I’m Dean.”

“Sarah,” the woman said.

“I’m investigating what’s happened here. I was told you guys were around when the butterflies arrived?”

“That’s right,” said Sarah. She had pale skin; her blonde hair was wispy and messy, there was a stain of what looked like sick on her sweater shoulder, and she had huge dark circles under her eyes - but inside those eyes, Dean could see a deep, profound, surprised kind of calm. She looked - strangely beautiful, Dean thought, but not in an attractive and tangible way. Her face was soft and mild like a delicate marble sculpture. She was ethereal - graceful, in the angelic sense of the word, despite her lumpy clothing and obvious exhaustion. She watched Dean with a stare that looked mazed.

“Could you... tell me about it?” Dean prompted gently, and she sighed.

“You won’t believe me,” she said.

Dean held back a wry smile.

“Try me,” he said. 

There must have been something convincing about his tone, because Sarah glanced up at her son just for a moment to check on him before starting to talk.

“I don’t know,” she said. “One second, Liam’s screaming and he’s going to make himself sick with it again. He’s got chronic pain, you know... he can’t help it. Today was just a bad day. We have a lot of those.” The sentence came out heavy, tired. Dean nodded sympathetically, glancing up at the kid. He was still playing with the butterflies.

“I’m sorry,” he said aloud. Sarah raised a shoulder.

“Today was really bad. We went to the hospital earlier for his appointment with the results of the scans and they said there was nothing they could do for now and we’d been so hoping that, you know…” She took a breath, and it shook ever so slightly. “Anyway - sorry, yes. We came here to cheer up but he was hurting so much. He wouldn’t get down from the slide and he was screaming and he kicked me when I tried to get him down, so I went to go get his GameBoy. He likes his GameBoy. I could hear him getting louder and louder and then next thing…” She waved one arm weakly to gesture around the play area, the movement not even trying to be grandiloquent enough to encompass the strangeness and the beauty all around them. It was too much to even attempt, and that was obvious to her and Dean both.

“It was the man,” said Liam from the top of the slide, who was gently stroking the topside of one of the butterflies’ wings with the very tip of one of his fingers. He had dark skin and tight curls, but his mother’s blonde hair colour and light eyes. Dean raised his eyebrows at Sarah, who nodded; permission granted, Dean stepped towards the slide.

“The man?” he said, putting his hands in his pockets, careful to seem as non-threatening as possible. Liam kept looking at the butterfly, which was holding its wings still for the boy to pet.

“The man. He had butterfly eyes and he touched me on the side of the head.”

“He did?”

“Yes. Then it wasn’t hurting anymore.”

“What wasn’t hurting?” Dean asked softly. Liam looked at him for the first time, his light eyes solemn.

“Everything,” he said simply. 

“Everything?”

“Yes. It’s all better now. I think it’s gone away forever.”

Dean glanced over at Sarah, who had tears pouring silently down her cheeks, one hand pressed over her mouth, crying with a suddenness that Dean recognised. An impossible reprieve for someone that was desperately loved. More than that, her own son, freed from pain. She was shaking her head as though she couldn’t believe it - and small wonder, Dean thought.

“He’s so calm,” she said to Dean, quietly. “He’s so quiet. He’s never been able to be this calm before.”

Dean looked back at the boy, and Liam watched Dean with placid, steady, clear eyes.

“The man made it better,” he said again.

“Did -” Dean tried to speak, but he needed to clear his throat. “Did the man say anything to you?”

Liam seemed to think for a second. “He said he wanted to make me feel better. He said couldn’t remember if this was how to do it,” he said. “I asked for butterflies so he gave me some but he said he thought he’d done it wrong. But he couldn’t remember why. Then he left.”

Dean’s head dropped for a second, and in his chest, his heart dropped twice as hard. So, there it was. 

Castiel couldn’t remember.

Castiel had forgotten everything.

He was lost, and he had no memories. Everything, all of his - his  _ Cas _ -ness - it was all gone.

He’d forgotten how many butterflies were enough to cheer someone up. He’d apparently forgotten how to fly far. To judge by the state of the road they’d found themselves driving on last night, he’d forgotten that trees didn’t belong in the middle of a freeway.

He’d forgotten Dean.

It was all gone. All of it. Right now, Dean was the only person in the whole world who knew what they were to each other. The only person who knew what they’d been through, what it meant. The only person who was keeping it alive. Castiel was gone.

Dean resisted the urge to punch something - anything - the slide, the jungle gym, his own damn face. It hurt worse than he knew what to do with.

Except -

Looking at Liam’s face - the ease of it, the gentleness of his hands - and Liam’s mother, who was still shaking her head in disbelief, that look of wonder and calmness caught in her eyes - looking at them both, Dean thought that maybe - just maybe, a fool’s hope of maybe - Castiel wasn’t all gone. With a twist in his chest, a bittersweet and hopeful and hopeless ache, Dean looked around at the butterflies, and the calm, and the boy who wasn’t feeling any pain - and he recognised someone he knew.

He needed to get back to the car. He wasn’t going to lose it here, in front of Liam and his mother - and he needed to talk to Sam, they had to make a plan.

“Thank you,” Dean said in a tight, dry, small voice to Liam, and nodded to his mother.

“The man,” said Liam, his voice arresting Dean as he turned to walk away. “He said he was looking for something.”

Dean spun sharply, frowning.

“Did he say... what it was?” he asked, checking himself halfway through, trying not to demand it too harshly. Liam shrugged, shifting the butterflies on his shoulder. They flapped peaceably.

“He said he couldn’t remember,” said Liam. “He said it was something important. It was the first thing he said. He said, do you know what I’m looking for?”

Dean pressed his lips together, hard.

“Do you know what he was looking for?” Liam asked.

Shaking his head, Dean turned away. He breathed deep breaths, tried to let the butterfly calm fill him up, or at least take the edge off the dark, hungry chasm of utter despair that was opening wider and wider within him. As much as this butterfly miracle was awesome - beautiful - as much as it allowed for a splinter of hope, it couldn’t hide the truth.

Castiel was lost. Castiel didn’t remember anything. Castiel didn’t remember who Dean was.

To Castiel, now - he meant nothing.


	4. Chapter 4

“Maybe it’s just a temporary thing,” Sam said. “Maybe it’s just - maybe he’ll just remember who he is, and -”

“And maybe Santa’s real and cowboy gear is coming back in fashion,” Dean said, tossing his shirt to one side and pulling on a fresh one. They were back in the motel - same one, after having spent all day searching fruitlessly for any more signs of Castiel. 

“Dude. Just wear the hat all the time if it makes you happy.”

“Really?”

“No. I’m turning the light off.” Sam clicked off the lamp beside his bed, and rolled over. Dean lay still in the dark, breathing in the musty air. He had the covers half-on, half-off; he was sleeping in his clothes, ready to go at a moment’s notice if anything came up, but still wanting a little of the covers’ comfort.

Castiel was lost. He didn’t know what he was looking for. That was what Dean kept coming back to - the fact that Castiel was out there, alone, and he was looking for something.

Castiel could be miles away. 

Could be  _ galaxies  _ away. Those wings could take him anywhere.

Thinking of Castiel, far out there in the wastes of empty darkness between stars, turning and turning and looking and looking and not even able to remember what he was looking for - how frightened he must be -

Dean turned over viciously fast, and breathed out as slowly and quietly as he could.

_ Cas,  _ he said, in his head.  _ If you can hear me, I’m here. I’m right here. Just come back. Please. _

It was a prayer, of a kind. It hurt like a prayer, anyway.

***

Dean woke up after four hours of uneasy, disturbed sleep, and found Sam already awake. His brother was sitting across the room at the beaten-up table, his face lit up by the screen of his laptop. 

Squinting his eyes, Dean grunted and shook his head to clear it.

“Hey,” Sam said. “You look awesome.”

“Shut up. Find anything?”

“Nothing definite. It’s early, though. Nothing much on the move. Just got a few leads, no sightings.” Sam fiddled with the wire on his laptop. “You were talking.”

“Huh?”

“In your sleep. You were talking.”

Dean frowned, and sat up. His dream… he tried to remember it, but it was hazy and strange. He’d been in an old house where they’d worked a hunt years ago, and he’d been trying to find Castiel - even though he hadn’t even known Castiel when they’d been inside that house on the hunt - and there had been music playing, and he hadn’t known how to turn it off so that he could listen for Castiel. And then - quite suddenly - there had been Castiel in his dream, sharp and defined and confused.

_ “Cas?” _

_ “Who... is Cas? Who are you?” _

The details began to fade away, dream sand slipping between the fingers of his consciousness.

“What did I say?” he said, wearily. Sam lifted a shoulder.

“Nothing,” he said. Dean looked away, reaching for his phone as Sam turned back to his laptop. “Just muttering. Something about a promise.”

Dean went still. He threw a look over at Sam, who was watching his laptop fixedly, his jaw tight.

“Just a dream,” Dean said gruffly. Sam nodded, his mouth twitching to one side. Dean turned back to his phone.

No messages, of course. How could Castiel have sent a text? He couldn’t remember Dean’s face, Dean’s name. There would be no texts, no messages. Nothing. Just Castiel’s face, sharp in dream - sharp enough to cut himself on, when he woke up.

“You got anything?” Dean said aloud, trying to distract himself.

“Still just a maybe,” Sam said. “Same as two minutes ago. Couple weird things. We could follow them up.”

They didn’t talk much on their way out to the Impala, squinting against the grey dawn. The sun was hoisting itself weakly into the sky like an old man crawling on his elbows, wheezing out clouds with the effort and leaving strands of hair-thin light across the beat-up cars and rusty railings in the motel parking lot.

The sound of the car doors closing was too loud, jarring and familiar against the milky surreality of the early morning. Dean swallowed, and started the car, and tried to feel real.

It hurt, quite a lot, so he stopped. It was much easier to be not real, somewhere a few feet outside his own body, when Castiel was -

“Where to,” he said, pushing the words out through cotton wool thickness in his throat.

Sam told him, and he drove.

***

The first couple of leads were useless: a badly-done crop circle that had clearly been made by local kids, and a library that had been broken into and all the books placed outside - it turned out that the librarian’s ex-boyfriend had a grudge and a strange sense of humour. Dean had known that it wasn’t Castiel’s work the moment they’d arrived, even before they found out about the ex; there was none of yesterday’s butterflies about it, no wonder. And the books had been arranged to say  _ fuck you Paul,  _ which didn’t seem like a particularly Castiel thing to write, memory or no memory.

The third lead, however, was different.

They found the woman sitting alone at the care home, in a room made of glass walls and a glass ceiling and a light wood floor. She was white, and tall, and thin, and her eyes were closed as they approached. She wore a simple old-fashioned dress. Curls of silvery hair hung a little limply on either side of her face, which was fine-boned and wrinkled over beautifully.

When they’d stood in front of her for a moment in silence, letting the sun warm their backs, Sam cleared his throat. Her eyes opened, and she blinked at them confusedly.

“Now, I don’t know you,” she said. Her voice was deep and rich, despite her frailness. “Are you new or have I forgotten you?”

Dean opened his mouth to answer, and found that he couldn’t. The question hit too close, even if it was from the wrong lips.

“We’re new,” Sam said, easing over the moment. “We’re here to investigate what happened to your arm, Ma’am.”

They flashed their badges, and the woman didn’t even glance at them.

“Oh,” she said. “My arm?”

“Yes, Ma’am,” Sam said patiently.

“No, no, young man. My arm has been gone for years.” The woman smiled peacefully up at Sam, with two hands folded neatly in her lap. “I hurt it in an accident when I was small. The doctors had to take it off. Would you like to hear about it?”

“Well -”

“I’m not very good at remembering things these days,” she said conspiratorially to Dean, who found he couldn’t speak. He did his best to smile understandingly. “But it’s just new things that don’t seem to stick. The old things, they’re like that old wallpaper in our living room back when we lived in Salt Lake City. With the pattern raised off the wall, so that I could feel the flowers, even in the dark.”

“Ma’am -”

“There is ever such a lot of dark,” the woman said. She looked briefly worried, but the expression faded quickly. She looked up at them, her light eyes warm and welcoming. “Hello,” she said. “Now, I don’t know you. Are you new, or have I just forgotten you?”

Dean clapped his brother lightly on the elbow, and twisted his guts into something approaching courage, and knelt down beside her.

“Ma’am,” he said.

“Lily,” she said. “Please.”

“Lily. We’re just here to talk about your arm.”

“It’s gone, dear,” Lily said.

“It’s been changed. Is it OK if we take a look?”

“Changed?” The question was sudden, the calmness in her voice breaking over rocks of concern. The old lady leaned forward, lifting her arm - and as she did so, Dean saw the way that it caught the light.

“Oh,” Lily said, suddenly rapturous. She held her arm aloft in the glass room, turning it so that the sun would catch on every little moving part of it - every gear, every little sharp-toothed golden wheel and engraved panel. The arm was metal, an intricate and delicate clockwork wonder. Dean could hear the sound of it ticking as Lily moved it, the sound steady and comforting. When she flexed her fingers, metal knuckles folding perfectly, she gave a little sigh.

“I think this must be a dream,” she said. “I do get confused. But it’s a very  _ nice  _ dream. I’ve always wanted my arm back.”

The arm was Castiel’s work, and Dean knew it. He didn’t need to be told. It was there in the miraculous happiness on Lily’s face, the softness of her disbelieving smile. It was there in the burn inside Dean’s chest - the heat that rose in him, recognising Castiel trying to help.

Castiel, still out there. Just enough of him to still be doing some good - to still be making the world a little better.

“Is it real?” Lily murmured, turning to Dean. He nodded solemnly.

Castiel had made it, and it was real. Even if he didn’t remember doing it, now. Like butterflies, like promises - he’d made them, and they were still real, even if he didn’t remember them.

And he was still in town. Still around here, somewhere, if they could only find him. Lily surely wouldn't be able to help with that, though; Dean doubted she had any memory of even speaking to Castiel.

“Lily, do you remember who did this?” Sam said, gently. Dean looked up at him, and caught his eye; Sam understood, and nodded. “We’ll leave you in peace, Ma’am. Thank you for your time.”

“For once,” Lily said to Dean, catching him before he could stand up, “I’m glad that I forget. I can keep seeing this arm for the first time, over and over again. Isn’t that something? I wonder if I told him to leave my head this way just so I could keep doing it. I’d tell him so now.”

Dean breathed out. He had to ask.

“Who?” he said, knowing the answer. Lily looked up at him in surprise.

“Oh,” she said. “The angel. Who was looking for something. He was ever so upset.”Her metal arm slowly dropped down to her lap, and she lifted the other - her paper-skin hand - to pat Dean gently on the cheek. “Now,” she said. “I don’t remember you. Are you new, or have I forgotten you?”


	5. Chapter 5

“I think he’s still around here.”

Sam was leaning on the back of the Impala, scrolling through his phone. Dean shook his head.

“Doesn’t make sense.”

“How’d you figure?” Sam said, not looking up. “All the weird stuff’s been happening here.”

Dean took a swig of water from the bottle he’d picked up at the convenience store near to Lily’s care home. He felt heady with tiredness, the fact that he’d slept so little and so lightly catching up with him. The parking lot they were in had trees stationed at regular intervals down the centre, and Dean couldn’t help thinking of Castiel. Would he appreciate the symmetry, or wish they weren’t so regulated and controlled? Or both?

Right now, Castiel wouldn’t remember what he appreciated and what he didn’t.

“I don’t know,” Dean said, snapping the thought thread and pulling himself back into conversation. “It just doesn’t make sense. We chase him halfway across the state in the middle of the night and he’s right ahead of us the whole way, tearing up roads and all that crap, and then we just happen to stop in this town, and it just happens to be the town where he’s already stopped? And we stay here, and he’s sticking around too, when he could be anywhere? What are the chances? Doesn’t add up.”

Sam said nothing. Dean could see him thinking, and not saying any of his thoughts out loud.

“What’s he got to stay for around here, if he doesn’t remember who he is?” Dean said, to fill the quiet. He tried to suppress a yawn; his eyes were burning. “He could be halfway across the cosmos. He was probably just wasting time here.”

“The kid from yesterday said he was looking for something, right? So did Lily. Maybe it’s around here.”

“He doesn’t even know who he is,” Dean said. “Doesn’t know his own name. What’s he gonna remember more than his own name?”

Sam said nothing. Dean could see him thinking, though, still.

***

“Cas?”

Dean saw him standing on a sea of stars, black and still and infinitely deep. He was in his trench coat. Above him, the sky was open onto nothing, an endless drawn-out note of silence. Castiel himself was a whisper in the dark, a dash of light and realness against the abyss above and the galaxies beneath his feet.

“Who’s Cas?” Castiel took a step closer to Dean, his eyes intense, staring at Dean - but not in the right way, not in the way that Dean knew. The look in his eyes was desperate, searching, lost.

“You,” Dean said. “It’s you.” His mouth felt strange. The words seemed to tumble out, unruly, and they sounded muffled against the darkness that surrounded them. 

Castiel was standing perhaps a hundred feet away, and Dean could hear him perfectly.

“Do you know what I’m looking for? There’s something I’m supposed to have… or keep… but I can’t -”

“Cas -”

“Who’s Cas?” 

Dean could see him so clearly, standing so far away.

“You are,” he said. He wanted to reach out and touch; he wanted his touch to be known, familiar. He wanted Castiel to know him. But when he held out his hand, it wasn’t there; he could see the stars through it. Dean looked down, and realised that he was invisible. All he could see was the sea, and the curlicues of astral light and fire that burned steadily under its calm surface.

“Do you know what I’m looking for? It should be here.”

“Cas,” Dean said. “You’re just looking for yourself. You’re right here.”

“Who’s Cas?”

Dean jerked awake, and the stars below his feet went out. 

Sam, scrolling through his phone beside him in the Impala, glanced over at him. The car was still in the same parking lot; Sam had convinced Dean to wait for a new lead rather than head out aimlessly into the town, and Dean - exhausted - had fallen into a fitful sleep. Now, the world faded back into greys - reality doing its feeble best to assert itself, and doing as miserably as it ever did during sudden loss.

“You were talking,” Sam said.

Rubbing his eyes, Dean sat up straight, and put his hands on the wheel.

“It’s nothing,” he said.

“You’re saying his name. He’s come to you in dreams before, right?”

“Well… yeah, but -”

“Do you think it’s him? Like… actually him?”

Dean was quiet for a while.

“I don’t think it matters,” he said. “Either way. Whatever I say he doesn’t remember anyway.” He let out a breath, and tried to pull himself together. “Tell me we don’t have to sit here and wait any more. Tell me there’s something to go on. A different summoning to try. A new special kind of prayer that always gets the job done. A new lead. Anything.”

Sam swallowed, and shook his head.

“Nothing,” he said.

It was four in the afternoon, and neither of them had eaten. Dean could tell that Sam wasn’t in the mood to eat - too worried about Castiel, too wired - but they both needed to eat something, or they’d lose what edge they had left.

“Come on,” he said, and got out of the car. “Main street’s not far, right? We’re going to get food.”

***

“Hi, what can I get you today?” The girl’s voice was the tired side of peppy, but she still gave Sam a smile as he stepped up to order his food. Dean stood behind him in the line, staring around at the interior of the fast food joint. It was just dirty enough to feel realistic, which helped stop his mind from running back to that dream - to the dreams he kept having.

Castiel kept showing up. Did that mean something? Was it really him, or was it just Dean’s mind playing tricks on itself?

A man walked past to dump his trash and stack his tray, talking on the phone as he did so, looking distracted. He was white and had dark hair cut the same way as Castiel’s, Dean noticed - but the eyes, they were different. Green, and strikingly so.

Sam paid and took his tray, and Dean stepped up to the front of the line. The server gave him a smile - a more flirty one than she’d given Sam, Dean noted with slight discomfort - and asked for his order. Dean picked a few random things off the light-up menus behind her head, selecting at random. He had no appetite, so it didn’t hugely matter what he ate. 

The server watched him under her lashes. She, too, Dean noticed, had green eyes. The same striking shade. He wondered if she was related to the guy on the phone; they were that similar. It didn’t seem likely, but it couldn’t be impossible.

When Castiel had looked at him in the dream, Dean hadn’t felt as though the real Castiel had been looking at him. But then,  _ would  _ he feel that, when Castiel was so - so not himself? Even if they were standing in front of each other, face to face in real life, would it feel as though Castiel were there?

It didn’t matter much either way, Dean reminded himself. Castiel in the dreams never listened to him, anyway. Or couldn’t.

“Here you go, handsome,” said the girl behind the counter, pushing Dean’s tray towards him.

“Thanks,” Dean said.

“You busy tonight?” the girl said. “Because I could stand to look into those green eyes a little longer.” She winked.

“Charlene, stop hitting on customers.  _ Please _ .” The exasperated voice came from the server working the other till, who was wearing a badge that said  _ Manager  _ and an expression of exhaustion. Dean picked up his tray and gave Charlene a quick smile.

“How ‘bout you just check out your own in the mirror,” he said, and turned away. Charlene’s expression, in his peripheral vision, was confused. Dean didn’t dwell on it.

The food didn’t taste of anything, but Dean didn’t blame the fast food joint; the finest meal in town would have still tasted like dust in his mouth. He couldn’t remember how long it had been since he’d last eaten, and he wasn’t hungry at all - even the feeling of food in his mouth made his stomach twist a little in rebellion - but he dutifully chewed and swallowed, chewed and swallowed. He couldn’t afford to pass out from low blood sugar.

“‘scuse me,” said a rough voice - a guy in his mid-forties, Dean guessed at a glance, who was standing by the table where Dean and Sam had settled themselves, his hands on one of the empty chairs. “You using this?”

He had a salt-and-pepper beard, a hat on, brown skin - and bright green eyes.

Dean stared.

“Nah, man, you’re good,” Sam said, cutting in when Dean said nothing. When the guy had taken the chair and gone, Sam went back to his burger, but Dean watched after him.

Green eyes. The guy on the phone and the server and now this guy who wanted their chair. It couldn’t mean anything - surely, it couldn’t - but there was something about it, some feeling in Dean’s chest, that gave him pause. He knew that feeling. He recognised this. It was promises and butterflies and clockwork arms. Dean had the feeling that Castiel had made this, somehow, had done something -

“Dean?”

“Mm?”

“What’s up?”

Dean looked back to his brother, who was peering down at his burger with an expression of distaste.

“Probably nothing,” Dean said. And then Sam looked up at him, out of bright green eyes.

Dean hit the back of his chair as he recoiled. Sam’s eyes - the hazel shade he knew so well, that he accepted without question, it was gone. In its place, there was the same green as the server, as the two other guys Dean had seen. Sam was watching him, those strange eyes blinking confusedly.

“Dean?”

“Your eyes,” Dean said. “Sam…”

He looked around the restaurant, the world starting to swirl around him. The other people in the place with them - they were eating their food, talking, laughing, just behaving normally. And yet, now that Dean looked -

The woman sitting at the table beside them, reading something on her tablet with green eyes.

The kid running up and down the length of the restaurant, half-falling by their table and grabbing onto Dean’s arm to steady himself and looking up at him warily before running away - looking up at him through green eyes.

The group of girls sitting in the corner, playing on their phones, laughing as they stuck out their tongues for each other’s cameras and fussed with each other’s hair and smudged each other’s eyeshadow into something cooler than neatness - eyeshadow that framed, on every single one of them, a pair of bright green eyes.

“Shit,” Dean said, under his breath, because he didn’t know what else to say. Was he dreaming?

“Dean?” Sam said, and it sounded as though Sam’s voice came from underwater, muffled and strange - Dean too distracted and disturbed to hear him properly. He got up out of his seat, heading for the exit. Everyone he passed had green eyes, green eyes. Bright green eyes.

Someone walked into him, colliding with his shoulder, apologising with a hand on his arm. Green eyes.

Someone was coming through the door to the restaurant, smiling politely at Dean to let him pass as they held the door open. Green eyes.

Someone was standing on the street with their partner, arms around each other - and then they pulled away from the embrace with a frown on their face, and said,

“Wait. Have your eyes always been that colour?”

Dean watched person after person walk past through the blur of his world, their eyes all bright, bright green. A hand on his shoulder spun him around, and Dean found himself looking at Sam - green-eyed Sam. Sam, but different.

“Dean, what the hell?”

Dean’s heart was pounding. This was the part where he was supposed to do something - the part where everything was going wrong, and he was supposed to act, save the day, stop it being scary - but there was nothing he could do. He was helpless. The town was so big and every person in it had bright green eyes and there was nothing he could do about it.

Were his changed, too? Surely they had to be - there was no way he could get out of it.

“My eyes,” Dean managed to say. “Are they different to usual?”

Sam squinted. Dean could see him brush off the temptation to make a stupid joke, sensing Dean’s seriousness and answering without a hint of laughter in his voice.

“Nope. Same green as always.”

And the breath stopped in Dean’s lungs. 

His heart skipped one, two beats, before reasserting itself harder than ever. His vision swam. All around him were people, walking about their daily business, going to get food and see friends and work their jobs, all seeing the world through different eyes to usual. Seeing the world through green eyes.

Not just any green eyes.  _ Dean’s  _ green eyes.

“Dude,” said Sam, beginning to catch on as he paid attention to the people walking past them, looking where Dean was looking, stumbling along in the wake of his train of thought. “Dean - holy crap - are my eyes…?”

Dean nodded mutely. He didn’t know what to say. Sam put a hand up to his cheek, just below his eye, as though he’d be able to feel the difference.

“They’re your eyes,” Sam said.

Dean shook his head, disbelievingly, but he couldn’t deny it.

“What’s it mean?” Sam said. “Is it -”

“It’s Cas,” Dean said. “But it’s - I dunno - different.”

The other ones - the other miracles, they’d felt nothing like this. They’d been good, they’d been beautiful, they’d been wonderful; they’d been Castiel trying to help, Castiel doing his best to be kind. Just being near them had eased a little of Dean’s worry, taken the sting out of his loss.

This, though. This felt like panic. This felt like desperation. Dean looked into the eyes of the people around him, and knew that Castiel was in trouble.

“He’s looking for something,” Sam said slowly.

“We knew that already,” Dean said. “But -”

“He’s looking for green eyes.  _ Your  _ eyes.” 

Sam turned to Dean, who swallowed. He’d put it together himself - of course he had. He’d known, in a way, all along.

“Dean,” Sam said. “He’s looking for you.”


	6. Chapter 6

“Where do we go from here,” Dean said. It was all he’d seemed to ask, all day. The road was back under the tyres of the Impala, and she was flying down a winding road at full tilt to nowhere. Dean had needed to get away, stop seeing his own eyes everywhere he looked.

“The motel?” Sam suggested; Dean thinned his lips, and smacked the flat of his hand against the steering wheel.

“No.”

“I'm just saying… if he's looking for you, the best thing we can do is stay still and let him come to us.”

“Yeah, right, because he’s done a great job finding me all the other times we’ve stayed put. It’s never gonna work. He can’t remember who he is or what he’s doing. He’s gonna keep moving.”

“Do you have any better ideas?” Sam demanded. He was back on his phone, and made a little grunt of discomfort as Dean took a corner too fast. “Would you slow down? We’ve got literally nowhere to go right now.”

Dean gritted his teeth and slowed down the car. She grumbled, too, seeming to feel Dean’s urge to rush and hurry even when he didn’t know where they were going. He could feel it in the air, in his bones; something was badly wrong. Not just that Castiel was missing - something worse. Dean felt as though he were on the edge of a precipice.

“He’s gonna get himself in trouble. Even _more_ trouble.”

“I know. And I’m trying to figure this out. But we have no resources and no way of getting any. We either follow his trail or we go back to the motel and hope,” Sam said.

“We could set up some kind of - of trap,” Dean said. “Angel trap. We could try summoning him again, and then…”

“Dean...”

“Or praying to him.”

“Dean -”

“I know, it’s not ideal, but it’s better than zigzagging across this damn town one more time hoping that at some point we just run into him and can be like oh, hey, by the way, maybe try to remember who we are -”

“Dean, this -”

“And I don’t know crap about any different summonings for an angel like Castiel but there are books, and -”

“ _Dean._ ” Something in Sam’s tone finally brought Dean grinding to a halt. He glanced right, and saw that Sam was holding up his phone again. Narrowing his eyes, Dean caught a few words, and his face paled. Wordlessly, he turned the car around; with a screech of tyres and the scent of burning rubber, they headed back the way that they’d come.

***

The closer they drew to Castiel, the darker the sky became. At first, only thin drops of rain splattered across the windshield, but the weather tautened and they became water whips that lashed and pummelled at the glass.

Dean and Sam didn’t speak. They drove with a roar down the road that took them towards Castiel.

Thunder rolled, the clouds above turning as heavy and ominous as deep ocean waters. The first time lightning cracked the sky in two, Sam half-jerked with surprise; Dean only steeled his eyes and tightened his grip on the steering wheel. When they pulled into the parking lot that they’d left not an hour before, it was on a hairpin curve that had Sam bracing himself for balance.

The rain was incessant.

Without bothering to find a space, Dean threw the Impala into park. Flinging open the doors, they were out of the car and running towards the far side of the parking lot - the place where the live news report on Sam’s phone had shown blurred video footage of a familiar figure.

The race across the parking lot took too long. The rain was pelting down, impossibly hard. Every breath sawed at Dean’s lungs. He ran with a single-minded desperation. He should have driven the car, but the parking lot was full of people and the lanes were narrow, and they had to move fast.

The news report had mentioned that armed response had been called.

There was a gathering of people, pushing and crowding each other to get a better look at something. Hitting the mob, Dean and Sam were forced to slow almost to a stop, trying to pry their way through the hubbub. Somewhere in front of them, there was shouting - lots of people shouting, all their voices calling out over each other, so that the sense was impossible to pick out over the din of the falling rain.

The thunder overhead growled like the hungry stomach of a beast, terrible and loud.

“Do you see him?” Dean called, shoving past a woman who exclaimed something he didn’t stop to hear. Sam, beside him, replied something that Dean couldn’t make out. He was soaked, water dripping into his eyes.

“Come on, move, move!”

They reached the front of the mass of people just as lightning flashed, and Dean came to a halt, struck still by sudden and instinctive terror. The crowd, as one, gasped and yelled. Some of them began to run.

The lightning had illuminated the scene at the edge of the parking lot.

A circle of black-clad people holding guns, which were all trained on a single figure.

A figure wearing a trenchcoat and a tie as blue as the sea in soft places, far away from here.

And the figure’s shadow, which was a hundred feet tall and black as night and winged, and stretched straight up into the fury of the sky.

“Cas!” Dean yelled. Sam grabbed for his arm, but Dean shook him off.

“Hey! Get back!” yelled the nearest of the black-clothed gunmen, waving one arm at Dean - but Dean ignored him, running on towards Castiel.

In full angelic glory, eyes lit up from within and glowing blue, Castiel had one hand curled closed in front of him as though he were holding something, and the other held up, palm-out. His jaw was set. Dean knew that look; the angelic certainty of it, the cool fury. Behind Dean, the guys with the guns were shouting, but Dean paid them no attention. He headed for Castiel, trying to slow his pace and seem calm.

“Don’t!” he called, his voice coming out raw and harsh over the rain. “Cas! Don’t hurt them!”

The shouts from behind him were getting higher and louder. Dean ignored them, coming in closer to Castiel, just a few steps away now. Castiel’s hair was ruffled, his mouth a flat line, his shining blue eyes showing no hint of recognition. Dean’s heart misgave, but he held out a hand.

Lightning flashed. Above, Castiel’s shadow loomed. Dean didn’t pull his hand away. The angel was huge, and mighty, and terrifying - but the angel was Castiel, and Dean was here to save him. Even though he felt small, and helpless, under the weight of the storm and the darkness of Castiel’s forgetting.

Castiel was right in front of him, not blinking, not speaking. He was watching Dean, looking right into his eyes.

“Cas,” Dean said softly, the rain like white noise that washed him out - but he hoped that Castiel could still hear him. “It’s -”

Another roll of thunder, another crack of lightning - that shadow, that impossible shadow, looming over them all, was instantly and terrifyingly lit up all over again -

There was a bang, like a single clap of thunder, except from lower down. From on the ground, close behind where Dean was standing, and Dean found himself stumbling. One knee went loose, and then the other, quite suddenly. He tried to give a little grunt of surprise as he fell to a kneel, but no sound would come out; he looked down, wanting to figure out how to stand up and why his legs weren’t holding him like they should, when he felt the wet, thick slide of something that was too warm to be rain down his back.

Down his shoulder blade, blooming through the material of his shirt, he could feel it. Kneeling, he looked up at Castiel, at his set-in-stone face against the ocean-and-light clouds up above. He pressed his lips together as the pain started, a flower of nerves on fire in his back.

He knew what had happened. He could hear Sam shouting, hear the panic in his brother’s voice over the rain.

“Ah, crap,” he said. Some nervous trigger finger had tightened at the sight of that shadow.

The wound was in a bad place, Dean knew from experience. He was still upright on his knees, but soon he’d lose consciousness. From the placement of the wound - left side, and it felt big and ugly - he didn’t like his chances of waking up again.

That feeling of surreality that had chased him over and over these past few days raised its head. After all these years of hunting - too many scrapes and close calls to be able to count - it was going to finish like this? In a parking lot, on his knees - shot in the back?

Sam was still shouting. Things were losing sharpness.

Dean looked up. All he wanted was for Castiel to look down at him. To soften that face of his into the expression Dean loved best. To reach out a hand. To remember him, before it was over. That, at least, would make things bearable.

Castiel was still. He did not look down.

And Dean swayed. He didn’t hit the floor; the floor hit him, rising up to greet him like a wave.

***

Dean was lost in a place that had no name, but he didn’t mind.

He knew there was something he’d forgotten - some reason that he should be worried - but this place didn’t seem so bad. The more he looked, the more it seemed to unfold before him; trees, and hills. A cliff edge, not too far away, that seemed to drop steeply away into a mist - a lovely mist, a curving gentle cloud that swirled as Dean watched and that hid the ground, which could have been feet away or miles. A strange mountain, close by. A soft sky, creamy and pink like a flower.

The sky bloomed a rose and put it into Dean’s hand, and he looked at it for a long moment and then thought, _I’m dreaming._

This didn’t seem like a problem. He let the rose fall out of his hand. The only thing was, he wished he weren’t alone. He felt as though he shouldn’t be alone. He wished his brother were here.

He wished Castiel were here.

The thought hit him in the stomach - no, it hit him in the back. It hit him in the back, and it hurt. It hurt a lot. It hurt so much that it felt like the world around him was caving just a little, sinking in on itself. Darkening. The sky’s sweet blush bruised into coral. There was a rumbling and there was wet on his back. Dean could feel his own heart fluttering; there was something bad, something he had to remember -

“It’s alright,” said the mountain. And then part of the mountain moved and turned, and Dean realised that part of the mountain was a person.

Part of the mountain was Castiel.

His vessel, with the face that Dean knew so well, except he was… he was _huge._ Dean looked at him, hundreds of feet tall; his mouth fell open, as the world around him filled back in and the feeling in his back faded. The dream reasserted itself.

“Cas?” he said.

“Is that your name? I don’t know who you are,” Castiel said. He was wearing no clothes that Dean could see, his bare shoulders sinking into the gentle sweeps of the mist.

Dean’s face creased. That was right. Castiel had no memory. They’d been looking for him. Dean had been dreaming about him.

Maybe this was just another one of those dreams. Maybe Castiel wasn’t even really here. The world they were in certainly felt soporific and unreal, though perhaps a little different to his usual dreams - more solid, stronger, and there was something about that fact that stuck in Dean’s head and made his heart beat fast.

“It’s alright,” Castiel said again. His huge face was solemn, watching Dean. There was no recognition that Dean could see in his eyes, but there was something - some spark of interest, or curiosity, that stopped him from simply turning and leaving.

For a long moment, they simply looked at each other. Dean drank in the sight of Castiel before him.

“You’re very tall,” Dean said. He said it quietly.

“Shouldn’t I be?” Castiel sounded concerned. His voice was bigger and slower and louder than usual, but the way it shook Dean’s heart in his chest didn’t feel unfamiliar.

“It’s OK. This is just a dream. You can be whatever size you want, I guess.”

“This is a dream?”

Dean sighed. He moved closer to the edge of the cliff, his steps growing shaky, and sat down. His legs were shaky… there was something wrong, there. Something that he needed to remember -

He looked into Castiel’s eyes.

“I’m dying,” he said. “That’s what it is. I’m dying.” He twisted, put a hand to his back, and it came away clean - but he could feel the pain of the wound there. “This is all just some stupid dream.”

Castiel was watching him curiously. Dean looked back, biting his lip.

“How do I know this is even real?” he murmured. The world seemed to whisper around him, grasses swishing, trees rustling, mist curling. There was the flutter of wings, and white doves flew in a quiet rush over Dean’s head, and swept past Castiel’s solemn face.

“This?” Castiel asked.

“This." Dean swept out an arm. "You. How do I know you’re not just in my head?”

Castiel’s face shifted, his eyes darkening.

“I don’t know where your head is,” he said. “I don’t know where anything is. I don’t know who you are.”

“You’re not a lot of help, are you?” Dean said. He didn’t mean the words to come out angrily, but they did - snapped out of him like kindling, and catching alight on the air. Castiel’s eyebrows raised.

“You’re angry,” he said.

And as soon as he said it, Dean truly felt it - all the anger that he’d been holding back, all the rage, everything he’d kept buried over the past couple of days. Somehow he’d managed to stoke himself a furnace under the ground of his heart; he could feel the white-hot centre of it it, now, pushing his hands into fists, pushing words into his mouth.

“What if I am?” Dean said. “What if I am angry? You just left without saying anything and I don’t know if you’re ever coming back the same way you were. So I’m angry about it. So what?”

Castiel didn’t say anything for a long moment.

“I don’t know who you are,” he said, eventually.

“What, like that gets you off the hook? You think that means I can’t be mad at you?” Dean pointed an accusing finger. “I know you’re still in there,” he said furiously. “I know you are. I’ve seen what you’ve done. I’ve seen it. Butterflies and new arms, you’ve been helping people. I know you’re goddamn well in there.”

“I don’t - know -” Castiel’s face was twisting with distress.

“Yes, you _do._ I know you're in there. Quit letting this thing control you, Cas!”

“Who’s Cas?”

“You are! _You are,_ you asshole! You -” Dean got to his feet, crouching down and picking up a rock - just a small one, smaller than his palm. “Remember who I am!”

“I can't - I don't know -”

“Just look at me! _Look at me!_ Look into my eyes, you - you -” Dean raised the rock, arm tense, ready to throw it. The weight of it was real and balanced in his hand. Castiel watched him, making no move to shield himself or step away. David before Goliath, Dean stood with the rock in his hand.

Looking into Dean’s eyes, his expression soft and sorrowful, Castiel said,

“I… I don’t know who you are. I’m sorry. I don’t know who you are.”

Dean swallowed, hard. And let the rock fall out of his hand, as though it burned.

The fight went out of him, all the anger extinguished. His shoulders dropped. The rock hit the ground.

“But you promised,” said Dean, more quietly than he’d ever said anything. He looked down at his shoes, working to keep himself together, murmuring the words. “You promised.”

Castiel’s forgetting was a wall that Dean couldn’t break through, a nothingness that he couldn’t fill. He had no words. He wanted to explain it all - wanted to tell Castiel who he was, what they were, what it meant. Where they’d come from. Crawling out of his own grave, because Castiel had battled through Hell itself and rebuilt his body sinew by sinew. The plunge of his knife into Castiel’s chest the first time they’d met. The way he’d gripped his hands into fists to stop himself from trembling when he’d first seen Castiel’s wings, dark shadows behind him.

More images, faster. Laughing outside a seedy bar with his arm thrown around Castiel’s shoulder. Arguing with him about free will and death and the meaning of it all. Castiel giving one of his rare and quiet smiles when Dean told a bad joke. Castiel looking up at Dean when Dean called his name. Castiel stopping his movement at the single touch of Dean’s palm. Castiel by Dean’s side, by Dean’s side, by Dean’s side -

Dean closed his mouth. He had no idea how to put any of it into words. How could he explain to a stranger that they were Castiel? How could he tell a stranger what they needed to be? How could he ask a stranger to keep a promise they didn’t remember making?

He was so tired.

 _Just remember me,_ he thought. _Please. I miss you._

“You…” Castiel was frowning, now, his eyes becoming more focused on Dean. “That. What I can feel, when you do that.”

Dean stared at him.

“You felt that?”

“I’ve been looking…” Castiel insisted, seeming to lose his train of thought even as it started, and changing tack. “When you did that. It’s like… something’s wrong. And I can fix it. But I don’t know how. I’ve never known.”

“You just have to remember,” Dean said.

“I’ve forgotten?”

Dean almost laughed, but knew it would come out dry and aching.

“You’ve forgotten everything,” he said. “Can’t you feel that you’ve forgotten everything? Doesn’t it feel like something’s missing?”

“How can I remember what - how can I -” Castiel’s face was twisting again, screwing up with the effort. “I don’t know who you are. I don’t know who you are. I don’t know who you are, I don’t know, I don’t -”

“Cas - Cas,” Dean said, wishing that he could take Castiel by the shoulders - wishing that he wasn’t too small to pull Castiel closer, too small to fight Castiel’s forgetting, too small to be any use. “Cas, don’t -”

“I keep looking,” Castiel said. “I keep looking. But I don’t know where to look. I don’t remember. I don’t know who you are.”

“Cas...” Dean’s voice was so small. His hands when he raised them, trying to make a calming gesture, were small. Everything was so small. He was so powerless. There had to be something he had, some way of being bigger, some way of making the scary go away - some way of beating this. Some part of him that was taller than the mountain, taller than the cliff face, taller than forgetting.

His mind went to the night before Castiel was lost, and stayed there.

He’d felt a thousand feet tall, then.

He allowed the memory to rise up.

_A motel room. His hand, unclenching. His breath, catching slightly as he stopped holding it._

_Castiel, standing close to him. Watching him._

_“Dean -”_

_“You don’t really mean it.”_

_“I do.” Castiel’s gaze, so steady, so earnest, so familiar. “I mean it.”_

_“It’s - Cas, we can’t - look at us, we’re always getting separated, we can never be - it’ll just hurt worse if we -”_

_“I’m done with being apart. I want to stay with you.”_

_Castiel taking a step closer to Dean. Dean accepting Castiel into his space with a tilting downwards of his head, a breath out that was soft and slow._

_“You promise?”_

_“I promise. I’m not going anywhere.”_

_Dean looking up - the nearness of Castiel terrifying and exhilarating, all at once. Castiel’s eyes dropping to Dean’s lips._

_“Say it again, then.”_

_Castiel smiling, old and happy and sad, and saying,_

_“I love you.”_

“Cas,” Dean said out loud, doing what he’d always done  - pouring everything into that one word. And Castiel went still.

Dean looked at him - at the angel who’d promised to stay, and then forgotten how to. _I love you,_ said Castiel in his head. Dean gathered his determination. _I love you._ He was a thousand feet tall. He could bring Castiel back. He just had to tell him who he was - he just had to help Castiel remember.

“You’re Castiel,” said Dean. Your name is Castiel. And you know me.”

The world around him murmured and sang, and Dean kept talking.

“You’re Castiel. You’re an angel. You touched an amulet that made you forget who you are - except not all the way, not everything, because you’ve still been trying to do things that I know you would do. You’ve still been trying to help people. If you still had your memories, I -” Dean caught himself, and steadied his tone. “I know you’d be proud of that.”

“Castiel,” Castiel said softly, the name seeming to slip through his mind like sand through fingers. Dean kept talking, because once he’d started, he found it was easier not to stop.

“Yeah. You’re Castiel. You wear a suit with a blue tie and a big old trench coat. You, uh. You have terrible taste in friends, honestly, they keep getting you into trouble. You’re the kindest person I ever met. You’re the guy stopping to help out anyone he can. You’re the guy who takes his coffee either black no sugar or with every drop of milk under the sun and a mountain of sugar, depending on the day.”

“I don’t - I don’t -” Castiel was fighting it; Dean could see the confusion in his eyes, the sadness.

“You’re Castiel. You have the weirdest sense of humour and I don’t get half the things you find hilarious. You’re clueless about pop culture. You can be a total freaking badass.” Dean felt a wave of sadness go over him, lost in his own words. “God, I miss you. I just want you next to me. I just want you to come back.”

Dean looked up, knowing his face was a lesson in tragedy, and not caring. He couldn’t stay inside this dream forever. He was dying. He didn’t want to do it without Castiel - the Castiel who knew him.

“I’m Dean Winchester,” he said. “You know who I am. Castiel. Please, just - just remember - who I am. Please just come back. You promised.”

There was nothing in Castiel’s huge eyes, no sign of familiarity. His face didn’t change.

And with a slam, the dream was gone.

The roar of the rain returned, an instant bellow. The sensation of loss, of flowing out of himself, that came with a bad injury - a sensation Dean knew all too well - rose up and encompassed him. He was on the ground, his head on the tarmac of the parking lot; with an effort, he levered himself up on one arm. His back groaned and protested.

“Dean,” said a voice above him.

Dean looked up.

Castiel was still standing above him - Castiel, untouched by the drenching rain, one hand still closed and the other facing palm out. Dean dragged himself a little higher, his body screaming, his eyes only on Castiel.

“Cas?”

“Dean.”

Castiel’s palm dropped, and his hand opened. In it, there sat the amulet.

“Cas -” Dean coughed and tasted iron. He could still feel the bloom of blood on his back, rolling over his skin, soaking his t-shirt - only moments could have passed while he was unconscious, and he could already feel himself slipping back under, his vision flickering like an old movie.

“Dean.” Castiel said the word a little differently each time, as though remembering what it meant.

Through the rain - from the ground, with his life melting faster than the pounding footsteps behind him could reach him, Dean looked up at Castiel.

 _I love you._ He was a thousand feet tall.

“Castiel,” he ground out - and said everything with it. All he felt, all he wanted, all he prayed for, in that one word.

And the amulet fell from Castiel’s hand.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The absolutely freaking stunning art in this chapter was created by [thefriendlypigeon](http://thefriendlypigeon.tumblr.com), and you can find it [here](http://thefriendlypigeon.tumblr.com/post/175117029904/dream-big-dcrb-2018-art-masterpost-the-worst) on tumblr!!!


	7. Chapter 7

“Coffee?”

“Mmm.”

“Black no sugar day, or milk sugar mountain day?”

“Hgh. Milk sugar mountain. Please.”

Dean looked down at Castiel, half-asleep on the double-bed that they’d shared the night before, eyes closed. Dean himself had his clothes on, and his shoes. He couldn’t help the glow of a smile that lit him up from within, watching Castiel’s bare back rise and fall as he breathed.

“I’ll be back. Don’t go anywhere,” he said softly, and headed out to the coffee shop a block away.

Outside, the morning was just getting started - cars and buildings were groaning into life, air conditioning getting cranked up, alarm clocks being shut off. Dean walked down the sidewalk, feeling every thud of his shoes against the cement, feeling the cool early-morning breeze on his skin, feeling the weak sunlight on his face. He was so inside his own body, so present. He’d slept well, last night, next to Castiel - and it showed.

He felt good. He felt strong. He felt - like he didn’t have any bullet wounds, which was more than he could have said yesterday. He rolled his shoulders, but there was no leftover pain. Of course not. Castiel knew how to heal him; he always had.

Ordering the coffees was an ordinary, everyday affair. Dean poured sugar into Castiel’s with a recklessness that he knew would be appreciated later. He thanked the server - brown-eyed - and carried the cups back to the motel.

He set Castiel’s down on the bed beside him, where it sat happily and steamed.

Dean sipped at his own coffee sitting at the end of the bed. The day before - all of it, from the green eyes to the gunshot to the dream of Castiel - it was going to take a while to work through his system. He didn’t know what to do with any of the feelings left in him, not dealt with yet - but he looked over at Castiel, and his heart calmed.

He was a thousand feet tall. He could handle it.

Castiel sat up, pushing a hand through his bed head and reaching for his coffee with the other.

“Mornin’,” Dean said.

Castiel crawled down to the end of the bed, and sat facing the headboard, shoulder to shoulder with Dean. He took a sip of coffee, and made a noise of appreciation.

“Good morning,” he said, after he’d swallowed it.

For a while, they simply sat in silence, drinking together and saying nothing. Dean was soaking in the feeling of being beside Castiel - being with him. Having him in the room. Right where he should be.

Castiel turned his head to look at Dean, and Dean looked back. They stared, unashamedly, their eyes drifting dreamily over lips, cheeks, eyes. Eventually, Castiel tilted his chin a little higher - and Dean, feeling a little thrill of quiet joy, leaned in and kissed him.

It was a gentle kiss, slow-moving and earnest and true. Dean could feel the worries in his heart breaking over the wonder of it, and being lost. Everything that he needed - every answer to every question he had - was in the way Castiel kissed him. They both tasted of coffee. Unhurried, lazy, they lingered.

When he pulled away, Dean blinked. Castiel stayed close - Dean loved how still he was, how easy, how unmoving in Dean’s space; his calmness was an intimacy, an unspoken passion.

“Dean,” said Castiel, and he knew what it meant. Dean could hear it in the tone of his voice.

“Cas.”

They kissed again, because they could.

“Amulet’s all wrapped up,” Dean said, when Castiel pulled back to sip his coffee. “Sam said we should look into it some more. Find out what we can about it.”

“A good plan.” Castiel drank some more coffee.

“We should leave in a few. I’ll let you get dressed.” Dean stood up, resisting the urge to kiss Castiel again - they could be there for hours, if Dean let himself have his own way on that - and headed for the door. “I’ll be right outside,” he said. “Don’t try sneaking out the back.”

He joked, but it was a little thin. Castiel seemed to sense it, because he looked Dean in the eye when he answered.

“I’ll be here,” he said. “I’m not going anywhere.”

“You sure about that?”

Castiel’s gaze was steady.

“I’m sure,” he said. He smiled softly. “And even if I did, I’d come back. I’ll always come back.” 

“You promise?”

Castiel smiled, just slightly.

“I promise,” he said.


End file.
